A Bombshell Bomber
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/books/review/Watrous-t.html
By MALENA WATROUS
Published: April 29, 2010
Given a few clues and fair warning, could a writer prevent the next
terrorist bombing? After all, as David Goodwillie demonstrates in his
hip and quick-paced literary thriller, "American Subversive," which
opens after an attack on the Barneys building in New York, the
writer's job is to notice things that other people might overlook and
to string together seemingly random details into a coherent plot.
Then again, writers are notorious for trying to see everyone's point
of view, and that kind of identification can be dangerous.
"American Subversive" is structured as a split memoir, alternating
between the points of view of Aidan Cole, a journalism school dropout
now blogging about the media for the Gawker-like "Roorback.com," and
Paige Roderick, a bombshell turned bomber, part of the inner circle
of a radical group modeled on the Weather Underground. Early on, we
learn that these two have participated in a radical action that went
terribly wrong. They are hiding from the law in separate safe houses,
both attempting to explain what happened. "We're far from innocent,"
Aidan writes in his tantalizing prologue, "But we're hardly guilty as
charged." This thriller is less a whodunit than an exploration of
what motivates radicalism in an age of disillusionment and impotence.
Goodwillie, the author of a memoir of '90s decadence, "Seemed Like a
Good Idea at the Time," excels at jet-black social satire in a style
reminiscent of Bret Easton Ellis. "American Subversive" picks up in
the hangover from that binge period, "a decade into the century of
the self, the age of endless explanation, where every life demands a
public forum, every face a shot at fame." For Goodwillie, an
occasional contributor to The Daily Beast, it must not have been a
stretch to channel the voice of Aidan the media blogger. Living in
the West Village, the hyperobservant and hard-to-shock Aidan is well
into his 30s but still untethered. He left journalism school because
he wasn't "that earnest"; he didn't believe journalists could make a
difference. "We never believed in anything," Aidan says, "which, as I
write now, seems as good a generational epigraph as any." He is weary
of everything, including his own weariness, which makes him
susceptible to the passionate Paige, his antithesis in every way.
At the start, Aidan is dating a "relationships columnist" for The New
York Times (Goodwillie's parody takes certain comic liberties), who
uses him as fodder for her columns, including one on their lackluster
sex life: "The literary has replaced the libidinal." It is at her
party, hiding in her bedroom to check his e-mail, that Aidan receives
an anonymous message containing a photograph of a beautiful young
woman striding in front of Barneys, before the building was bombed.
"This is Paige Roderick," the text reads. "She's the one
responsible." From this first glimpse of Paige, turning her head
"like a European beauty hastening past a group of lecherous men,"
Aidan can't stop thinking about her. Instead of deleting the photo,
or posting it as a joke on his blog, he uses his media connections to
track Paige down, soon confirming that she was in fact one of the
activists behind the Barneys bomb. This forces him to choose whether
to turn her in or, by protecting her secret, become her unlikely accomplice.
From the moment Aidan meets Paige, he is captivated by this
eco-terrorist with a silhouette "stolen from a teenage fantasy." As
for Paige, her motivations for having joined the radical group soon
become clear. She grew up in a military family in the Smoky
Mountains, and her beloved older brother died in Iraq. These
characters could be stereotypes blue state son meets red state
daughter but nuances in their back stories help to set them apart.
Aidan, raised on the Upper West Side, views his parents as
self-congratulatory and ineffectual liberals, while Paige's brother
was an ambivalent soldier at best. Well before the invasion of Iraq,
he was living off the grid with antiwar friends when he made the
mistake of enlisting in the National Guard for tuition. Paige was
working for an environmental nonprofit, frustrated by the compromises
and red tape. Devastated by her brother's death and seeking an outlet
for her anger, she was easily seduced by a group determined to wake
America up through acts of nonlethal, targeted violence.
By temperament as well as background, Aidan and Paige couldn't be
more different. Paige is introverted and serious, a nonconformist who
never quite fit into any group. At first, she thought the radicals
who sought her out were the exception. When she talks about their
mission, her "memoir" sometimes reads like a manifesto. "We wanted to
expose the wretched underside of the global energy supersystem. Does
it sound grandiose?" A bit. It also sounds like rhetoric that Aidan
Cole would mock. She started falling out with the group after their
charismatic leader made a pass at her that she felt undermined their
cause: "This was supposed to be different. A passion born of
something nobler than desire." Subsequently, she found something that
convinced her they were going to abandon their pledge not to hurt
anyone. When she deserted the radicals, she knew they could turn
against her by making her a scapegoat.
Once Aidan meets Paige, he quickly decides to throw over his life to
help clear her name and protect her from harm. The real woman more
than lives up to her photograph: "Paused in profile, my ingrained
image of Paige Roderick finally fell away, and the woman herself came
into focus: the long legs, the narrow waist, and a blossoming upper
body broad shoulders and full breasts evident (albeit to a
trained eye) under the loose T-shirt." He persuades her to hide with
him, and the two go undercover in a sweltering Chinatown tenement
where they lie on a narrow mattress side by side, trading life
stories. While Aidan comes to admire her political passion, her
physique is a constant enticement. "She had changed into a black tank
top, one I'd just washed, and it was so tight against her that her
arms appeared to have punched through and escaped." It seems oddly
out of character that Paige never bristles against his obvious
fixation on her looks, since she harbored such contempt for that
lusty radical. But Aidan's desire doesn't bother her. She begins to
reciprocate it as the novel turns inevitably into a love story that
feels more expected than earned.
But this is perhaps where the hybrid genre hits a wall, as the
requirements for the literary novel clash with those for the
thriller. Goodwillie has created two flawed yet sympathetic main
characters, with distinct and memorable voices. In Aidan's voice, he
has written a scathing and hilarious indictment of our bizarre moment
in time, complete with jaded socialites, quasi-celebrities and the
media that feed off them and one another. And Paige is a strong and
memorable female heroine, whose sincerity keeps the novel from being
a farce. If the book is an exploration of what motivates radicalism,
the answer Aidan's attraction to a hot chick potentially
trivializes that message. But then again, Helen of Troy was also a knockout.
.
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